Government Insights
Aesop:
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aristotle:
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that
the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
Bella Abzug:
If we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about,
we can turn the century -- and the economy -- around.
David E. Lilienthal:
Centralization at the national capital or within a business undertaking always
glorifies the importance of pieces of paper. This dims the sense of reality.
Edward R. Murrow:
Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
Edward R. Murrow:
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
Elie Wiesel:
It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities
restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a
reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation.
Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a
punishment.
Eugene McCarthy:
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient
bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to
protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough
informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.
George Bernard Shaw:
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent
many for appointment by the corrupt few.
H. L. Mencken:
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have
invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe
that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is
dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can
flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the
policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that
any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a
tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the
measure, is bound to become a slave.
H. L. Mencken:
As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the
inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last,
and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. [The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920]
Hubert H. Humphrey:
It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats
those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight
of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the
needy and the handicapped.
James Madison:
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it,
is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
Jane Auer:
It may be true that the government that governs best governs least.
Unfortunately, the same is also true of the government that governs worst.
John Adams:
Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of
people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no
expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.
John F. Kennedy:
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign
ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid
to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation
that is afraid of its people. [American President]
John Gardner:
The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life,
make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.
Mark Twain:
The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be
its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is
a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
[American Author]
Med Yones:
Governments have metrics to monitor your
money: they use metrics such as Gross National Products (GNP) and consumer
confidence to monitor and track economic health. Do they use a metric to
measure people’s own well-being?! [International Institute of Management]
Med Yones:
"The pursuit of happiness" is an American
myth, The ideologies and governments of this century that promised
happiness, have left people with more material possessions, but less
psychological well-being. Many of those people are emotionally bankrupt and
unhappy. The demands of life in our current socioeconomic system require
that we keep running and running with little or no breaks....Like their
parents, most of the young professionals will drift through life racing for
the "American Dream", going through very expensive trial-and-error lessons
and struggling to achieve happiness and fulfillment. Gross
National Happiness (GNH) [International Institute of Management]
Noam Chomsky:
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on
powerful institutions. [American Author, Scholar]
P. J. O'Rourke:
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
Paul Martin:
For years governments have been promising more than they can deliver, and
delivering more than they can afford.
Paul Ricoeur:
To put it in a few words, the true malice of man appears only in the state and
in the church, as institutions of gathering together, of recapitulation, of
totalization.
Robert Coles:
Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out
what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him,
cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a
year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?
Thomas Jefferson:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws
and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As
that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new
truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of
circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We
might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy
as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous
ancestors. [American President]
Thomas Jefferson:
I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if
we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from
them, but to inform them by education. [American President]
Thomas Jefferson:
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first
and only object of good government. [American President]
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